KDE 2.1-beta1 offers a number of additions, enhancements and fixes over
KDE 2.0.1, the last stable KDE release which shipped on December 5, 2000.
The major additions are:

A new and much-anticipated theme manager has been added, and many icons
have been improved. In addition, semi-transparency (alpha-blending) has
been implemented on small images and icons.

Pixie, an image viewer/editor, has been added to the Graphics package.

KDevelop, a C/C++ integrated
development environment, has been added to the core KDE distribution. The
version being shipped, 1.4beta, is the first version of KDevelop to
make use of the KDE 2 libraries and integrate completely with the KDE 2
desktop.

Konqueror, the KDE 2 file
manager, can now be
configured to provide thumbnail previews fortext and HTML files.
In addition, the standards-compliant Konqueror now stores bookmarks
using the standard XBEL
bookmark format; a new bookmark editor complements the new standard.
Finally, auto-proxy configuration has been implemented.

KHTML,
the HTML widget, now has a special 'transitional mode' which greatly improves
its handling of malformed HTML pages. In additon, KHTML now has greatly
improved Java support and has added support for Java security (JDK 1.2 or
compatible is now required).

The panel (Kicker) has enjoyed significant improvements.
An external taskbar has been included (familiar to
KDE 1 users), support for sub-panels has been added (which can be separately
sized and positioned), an improved external pager (Kasbar) has been added,
and support for applets has been improved (including support forWindowMaker dock applets).

ARts, the KDE 2 multimedia
architecture, now offers a control module to configure sampling rate and
output devices, increased performance, improved user interfaces and a
number of additional effects and filters.

For developers, a number of classes have been added to the core
libraries, including a class for undo/redo support (KCommand) and
a class for editing list boxes (KEditListBox).

hm, in my opinion, i think it must be better too, compiling the source.., i agree, but, i thought, it takes such a loooong time to compile so much files.., but i will try that :)
my maschine: intel 200MMx, 96MB RAM now (but 32 uncached)
thanks, manni

hi justin,
i have got another question, do you know why the Size of the source-packages or SuSE7.0-packages are just around 35MB ?
i remember, before the size of the packages was somewhat around 50-60MB right ?
are there still missing some files ?
thanks, manni
:)

Get an updated qt that contains the patches to use the new render, the easiest way to do this is to do a qt-copy checkout from kde's anon CVS. This already has the patches applied and a configure option to turn on render use.

Get an updated qt that contains the patches to use the new render, the easiest way to do this is to do a qt-copy checkout from kde's anon CVS. This already has the patches applied and a configure option to turn on render use.

Hi! Looks very nice!
But I can't open images with pixie any more!
Konqueror doesn't show gifs and I can't define an jpeg as wallpaper!
Is this a bug in this Beta or only on my system?
I have Suse Linux 7.0!
Thanks Chris!

How about Slackware and Debian packages? I run Slackware, and a number of my friends do as well. I have a PII 400mhz and it takes a while to compile the entire kde2 source tree and all packages from scratch. several days in fact. Not having Slackware packages around is a big dissapointment. Kde2.0 had them, but kde2.01 does not, how about somebody with a fast computer compiling them and makign them available for kde2.1 final? :)
-an anxious Slackware user...

For whatever reason, KDE2 takes a long time to compile. And I don't mean you can go out and get a cut of coffee long. More like you can go out on a date, spend the night, THEN have a cup of coffee.

I'm not saying this is anyone's fault - personally, I think KDE2 is very great from a technical standpoint(I mean, I can actually *read* the code), and it's getting very close in terms of great usability.

However, since it takes so long to compile, providing binary packages should be pretty high up in the list of priorities for a release. If the KDE release team has decided that "it's the distribution's job", then that's okay, but they should make it known.

Thanks for your time,

Dave

P.S.: I'm running Debian Woody, and if someone on the KDE release team reads this and wants my help, let me know.

If there is available precompiled RPM-packages, I much rather use them than compile the sources myself. Somehow it feels so much better to know that there exists an easy way to remove and update the software if needed.

Or does the "make install" always install the self-compiled binaries (etc) on top of the files which came from rpm-packages? In this case that of course wouldn't be any problem...

I have been using kde 1.1 for some time but then had to switch to windows for a while.

Now I got the chance to install KDE-2.0.1 on my
home machine and found out there are a couple of
things I really dislike. (I am using Mandrake7.2)

My problem is that, although it takes only an
hour to install Linux, it takes a week to configure KDE to work.

The first thing is that the default window controls are so unlike windows. With KDE you have to click on the leftmost button to close a window,
with windows you click on the rightmost button.
Now, with kde I ended up maximizing (or whatever that feature was) windows all the time. It is really annoying and I couldn't figure out how to change that although I was serching through the whole control center. There might be some themes that have more windows (or even KDE1) like functionality, but in Mandrake 7.2 there aren't. I am not such a fan of Widnows, I just I have to switch between Linux and Windows a lot and really dont like such inconsistencies. Yuck.

The second thing is the Konsole. It just happens that I don't like the default color schemes anyway. Well let's face it: half of them are black on white or white on black. Oh, of course there is also the transparency feature, which fails to refresh whenever you switch virtual desktops or restart a KDE session so why having it anyway. Well there is no feature to set up say a yellow or white letters on dark blue or gray backgrond. And why am I complaining about that? Because that is a standard. You can do that Gnome, you can do that with xterm, you can even do that in THE Microsoft Windows. Hell, you could even do that with the old kvt (the KDE1 terminal program). Apparently someone had decided it was wise to trade a useful custom color selection feature buggy transparency feature. And I guess that was just because GNOME had such a feature.

Why the hell is it, that everything has to be so 'feature complete' but noone thinks about useability. I would be gladly willing to get rid of 70% of the configurability in the control center just for some rationality about what users really need.

I am writing this comment on Windows while waiting to cool down enough to give KDE another try. Well maybe until the the KDE 2.1 might as well arrive.
Hell I am not willing to spend my life configuring and hacking things I needn't have to.

And by the way, I guess the worst thing that happened to Linux desktops is Themeability. Now no one gives a damn what the default desktop looks like, because everyone pretends things can be fixed with different themes.

Even better: in KDE 2.1 the close-button is on the right by default. And please don't forget: KDE 2.x is a complete rewrite, so nobody actually "removed" features. Expect to get full control over your colors in konsole soon.

In the current default the close button is FOUR pixels away from the other buttons (unlike the other buttons which are seperated by a distance of 2 pixels. If you should still have problems with that then you might want to choose one of the alternate windowmanager styles.

Why not make the positions of buttons an option? I know in Gnome, using the AquaX theme, you have the choice of "Windows style, Mac Style, KDE style" & etc, which addresses this issue perfectly. I don't know how the themeing works, but why not fix it now before it's too late?

I vote for the close-button on the left, like 2.0.0 and 2.0.1 releases. It's soo easy to use for crazy mouses and little brains like mine: left to kill, right for other operations. If it's not the default on 2.1, I hope there will be an "original KDE2" decoration.

More seriously, I think it's important for KDE to have a stable default decoration and theme. If this changes on each release, people will not feel "at home" and will have to re-learn their desktop.

Another thing: If users are focused on this kind of left/right button problem, that means potential deep problems like stability are very far from KDE2. Quite a good news!

You may want to consider dumping KWin for
another window manager. KWin is extremely
ugly-looking and seems to violate X11
standards in at least one place (send_event
field in XEvent structure). There is a lot
of other window managers available that are
more mature, configurable, and better looking
(WindowMaker,Enlightenment,IceWM,etc.)

That would not be fair. I do believe in KDE. I do believe they (we) can make a good Window Manager. If I didn't care, I wouldn't have written that complaint anyway.

I am sure KDE team can (theoretically) write a
good window manager. But the current fact is
that KWin is nowhere near available alternatives.
And I do not see why anyone would use substandard
software out of plain patriotism, when better
alternatives are available.

I am sorry, about the previous post. I have been a little bit pissed. I am a Linux supporter and I have even been developing it. I know things are getting solved and I guess I should better not complain about that.

I guess I am the kind of guy, who could easily sit down and fix all these things and share them with others. I enjoy coding C++ very much.

But with this matter, it comes down to principles. I keep trying to convince people to dump Windows and switch to Linux instead. Then, one day, I try to update my own Linux installation and end up with a pile of problems.

Those problems weren't there in kde1. Kvt worked fine and window buttons were exactly where I wanted them. Now since everyone made such a big deal out of kde2, I expected things to get even better. But it didn't. You know my perspective about windows/window managers was that they let me have 10 consoles open at the same time as well as some 15 web browser widnows. What I want most from kde is to help me handling that 25 windows without interfeering too much. I won't repeat that I have found some glitches with kde2.

I got used to a certain standard and then I was forced to change it. By the same guys. It reminds me of the Microsoft attitude: "Standards are great, everyone should have its own." Why did some developers thought of changing things in such a way, that they break previous kde standards. I find it difficult to forgive such a policy. At least I should have an option to stick with my old kvt instead of forcing me to work with konsole.

I don't blame kde not having antialiased fonts because I know how difficult it is to achieve. But I do blame the developer of konsole for spending heaps of time to support the transparency instead of spending probably less than 1 hour for customized colors.

Do you think I am wrong to expect developers to keep with certain standards?
I understand (now) you can select your own window button placement with kde2, but why was the default set in a different way that kde1 users were used to?
Do you think I should better sit down and fix things (like konsole) myself? I am not sure that would fix things in long run, I guess it is better to make a loud knock on some doors. Which doors?

Hmm. I don't think there is anything wrong with putting the close button on the left as default. Sure, it's not the same as KDE1, but the KDE team wanted to change it. The close button on the right has long been debated as the wrong place to put it (at least when it's near other non-destructive buttons). Just because it was placed on the right in KDE1, does it mean the KDE developers must put it there until the end of time? They want to make the Unix desktop different than Windows. At least they give you an option to change it to the right side. Isn't this enough?

By the way, if you want to alter your Konsole colors, have a look in this directory:

/opt/kde/share/apps/konsole

All of the schema files are in there. Twiddle to your heart's content! It would be nicer if this was in a configuration dialog someplace, but this should do for your purposes. If you don't have root access, try using the same folder in your ~/.kde directory. Usually you can override the system default settings in there.

Anyway, KDE is constantly a work in progress, and it's doing great. And it's *not* Windows. Just remember that.

The close button on the right has long been debated as the wrong place to put it (at least when it's near other non-destructive buttons).

I agree that close-at-right is wrong, but I liked the Motif approach: on the left, have a button that brings up the Window Operations menu (what you get now by right-clicking the title bar). Make double-click on that button close the window. Then remove the close button entirely; accidental window closure becomes unlikely. Oh, yes, and make Alt-Space the keyboard shortcut that posts the Window Ops menu.

MS Windows works much the same way, except it has a close button. I gather that this behaviour was inherited from some ancient IBM standard.

> You know my perspective about windows/window
> managers was that they let me have 10 consoles
> open at the same time as well as some 15 web
> browser widnows. What I want most from kde is to
> help me handling that 25 windows without
> interfeering too much.

I agree... I'm running KDE2.1 from CVS and here is how I have it helping me manage those windows:

I have a child panel with a task bar and pager at the top of my screen

The taskbar has a little drop down menu that lists every window on every desktop just in case the buttons themselves aren't enough

The pager has a button that shows a small snapshot of each desktop, very nice for visual recognition

I'm using the RiscOS decorations which, although very unlike MSWindows, has some VERY nice features, like the button that temporarily hides a window until you click on another window. at that point the window you clicked on becomes the front window and the hidden window(s) pop(s) up in the background.

I have assigned accelerator keys to swtich between desktops either by number or left/right

Instead of having 10 consoles open, i have one Konsole, with 10 sessions started in it which i can easily switch between using Shift + Left/Right or by clicking on their icons in the tool bar (also have turned off the menu bar, scroll bar (i have a scroll mouse), and window borders... lots of screen real estate saved)

with all these spanky features in KDE2 i manage a 6 desktop KDE session with dozens upon dozens of windows and apps running without breaking a sweat.

i think that perhaps the problems you are encountering are from the newness of KDE2. 2.1 is very usable (and nice looking to boot) but does not do things how they are done in MS Windows just because they are done that way in MS Windows. instead KDE2 implements things in ways that makes the sense (most of the time, anyways). It honestly takes about 30 minutes to get used to once you are all set up (this is from watching co-workers sitting down to their new KDE2 desktops)